More in ‘Isaiah’

Today in Tablet Magazine, contributing editor Joan Nathan tells you exactly what to do with those great summer tomatoes. Liel Leibovitz manages to fit both Isaiah and Inception into his weekly haftorah column. Roslyn Bernstein finds that a visit to Coney Island today brings back memories of the Coney Island of old. The Scroll is ...

Like the best and the worst of Hollywood’s summer fare, Inception, the new film by Christopher Nolan, is one part epistemology and three parts explosion, a gorgeous spectacle that offers one large existential question and many kinetic attempts at an answer.
The question is this: What is reality? Or, more specifically, how can we be sure ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, columnist Etgar Keret wonders if there is life after World Cup. Contributing editor Vanessa Davis gives Harvey Pekar a graphic farewell. Liel Leibovitz recommends that Israel look to the prophet Isaiah for guidance as it decides what sort of state it really wants to be. The Scroll has been wondering less ...

Summer is upon us, so allow me to adopt the heated language of film critics everywhere and claim that if you’re going to read just one haftorah portion this year, make it this week’s.
The Hollywood jargon isn’t entirely inappropriate. The scolding sermon in question, by the prophet Isaiah, has everything a blockbuster can hope for: ...

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
There’s nothing like a good countdown to get ready for Tisha B’Av, the day we grieve the destruction of the Temple. To get in a mournful mood, the three weeks prior to Tisha B’Av—known as Bein Ha’Metzarim, or the period between the straits—are marked by a series of fasts and abstinences designed ...

Having inadvertently messed up the schedule by writing about this week’s haftorah last week, I decided to take this opportunity and reflect on what I’ve learned in two years of reading and writing about the Bible.
Until two years ago, I was no more familiar with the Torah than I was with Beverly Hills, 90210.
I admit ...

When I was a teenager, growing up in a beachfront suburb of secular Tel Aviv, there was no taunt more effective than accusing someone of possessing the potential to one day become a ba’al teshuva.
The term, referring to unobservant Jews who adopt the strictures of Orthodoxy, represented, to us tanned and ignorant teenagers, some cosmic ...

Inevitably, at some point or other during the course of each year, a friend drops by with a resolution. “That’s it,” he or she will swear serenely, over brunch or coffee or dry gin martinis, “I’ll no longer speak lashon hara.”
Hebrew for “evil tongue,” it’s Judaism’s catchall phrase for slander, gossip, and other forms of ...

The haftorah, the new subject of this column, is a bit of scripture read as an addendum to the weekly Torah portion. While there are several theories as to its historical origin, the idea itself is audacious: rather than have a single text to scrutinize, let there be two, thematically linked and complementary. Let there ...